Today's News

In one of the most exciting games ever played at Harriman's Richard D. Pickell Gymnasium, the host Blue Devils kept their season alive with a dramatic 85-83 double overtime victory over Wartburg in the Region 2-A semifinals.

If you were out during or immediately after the pounding rain that hit Roane County Monday, you likely saw police, fire officials, road crews, rescue squads and other emergency officials hard at work.
They were clearing drains, cutting fallen trees, helping people from flooded homes, scraping away mud and debris, working vehicular accidents, blocking dangerously flooded roads, opening emergency shelters and, in general, helping the people they serve.
Many of us at the newspaper witnessed their work firsthand.

SPLAT!
It was yucky.
Some sort of great big bug committed suicide on my windshield as I was driving home from a meeting at our newspaper in Campbell County Friday afternoon.
I won’t go into all the gory details, but what remained of the insect left green, yellow and reddish-purple juices streaming down the glass and onto the hood.
To be honest, I don’t know how that much liquid a bug can hold, but this one must have been a beaut.
The darned thing’s remains pretty much turned my stomach.

Parents of a 14-month- old who drowned while bathing with his sibling have been indicted by a Roane County grand jury for criminally negligent homicide.
Jackson Dean Gregory died on Nov. 11 in East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, Knoxville.
District Attorney Russell Johnson said both Jami and Crystal Reagan Gregory of Harriman left their children alone during bathtime, which led to the child’s death.
“She put the 1-year-old in the bathtub with the 2-year-old,” Johnson said.

25 Years Ago
Cherokee Middle School was trying to implement a class to teach the fourth “R” — responsibility — into its curriculum. Principal Jody McLoud said the class would offer ways for teenagers to prepare for mental and physical changes that take place during adolescence. It would also help “give kids the strength and courage to make their own decisions and not follow the trend.”